May Day Memory

A Memory of Mochdre.

REMEMBER, REMEMBER


WE must have been thirteen.
Cousin Keith and I sat on a small flight of steps, what remained of a burnt-out bungalow overlooking the village.
It was May Day. Hot and somewhat sticky, but we cared not for the shinnanigins of the day.
We were too old. Thirteen, you understand. Now, bereft of silly things like dressing up as dwarfs, blacking-up as Kentucky Fried minstrels, eating ice cream cornets, knocking coconuts off poles and watching girls dance around a pole.
Cus and I had fled the day. Our observation post above the village was but a refuge from the mayhem.
Did we care? Not a jot. We had earned our place in the sun. We had done our duty for too many years. We had pranced with the best of them and made fools of ourselves in many a panto.
These two pussies had slid into their last boots.
So what hailed the day. Not too much. We gazed across the valley. We dozed. Morris dance music filled the air.
Old timers now were we.
We recalled sliding down Smithy Hill in the snow on a tray?
John Salt's dad had made him a proper sledge. We cadged a ride. Three of us atop the silver dream machine. Our combined weight, plus super slidabilty had us down the field, through a hedge and into the Afon Canol before we could say "Tom South".
A trouser-full on melting snow was enough to seek out Aunty Lal. A yard of her liquorice did the trick. Chapped nether-regions forgotten.
Then there was the egg incident. What we young 'uns called the "swamp" was our hunting ground. A long pole with a spoon attached was enough to scoop out moorhen eggs and that of the occasional duck.
Cock a hoop we were until farmer Hughes set his dogs on us. We waited until the rancid animals were but a few yards away before up-ending our poles and vaulting the water ditch to freedom.
Well, most of us got away, but one pole snapped and the pilot landed in the slimy, green, stinking water.
Happy days.
Cus recalled one panto. The one where we danced in front of the curtain and did a cartwheel to finish it off. Poor Arthur. He forgot he was taller than the rest. We fell about laughing as he ended up on top of Tommy Kay's drums in the orchestra pit. The audience loved it as well and called for an encore.
We didn't laugh when the scenery fell on our heads in another production, I reminded him.
No, he agreed, but it was nothing compared with chucking cousin Roger over Mrs Becket's hedge. That taught the little bastard a lesson, said Cus with a certain degree of satisfaction.
He had forgotten trying to burn the same mutant on the local bonfire. Nain caught us in the alleyway and gave us a right roasting.
We laughed out loud.
Silence as we pondered our past. Thirteen and we had a past?
Well, we had sat either side of a roaring coal fire listening to old man Fisher describe the horrors of the First World War.
Spellbound and the heat from the fire roasted a cheek a piece.
We were offered a cigar and a tot of rum. We puffed and supped. We forgot time. We got drunk. We got another roasting. Cus's mam walked in on this sorry array of manhood.
Catching sticklebacks in jam jars. Asking Italian prisoners of war to dig out a pool for us in the river. Watching old man Hughes stagger home into the street with only the privet hedge as a guide to his gate. Worse still, witnessing Ted Stephan pulling out a bad tooth with a pair of pliers.
Uncle Joe taking on a six footer who had the audacity to complain the television was too loud.
"Excuse me, young gentlemen!"
Our trip down memory lane was suddenly shattered by an distant voice.
Cus and I glanced up.
A knight of the road was upon us. A tramp to you and me. Stained from head to toe. A wash had perhaps taken place on D-Day. He was a mess.
"I wrote that", he proffered.
"Wrote what?" asked I.
"That tune you can hear", he urged.
The tune emitting from the May Day field was clearly God Save the King.
"No you didn't, said I.
"I bloody well did", snorted the smelly one.
Cus backed me up.
Smelly man became angry.
"I wrote that when I worked at Buckingham Palace", he lied to his rotting teeth. "They still pay me for the rights, you know".
Cus had had enough. "Bugger off", he demanded.
"How dare you, cretin", came the reply.
God, an educated tramp. Nothing worse.
Cretin was new to us, but we measured it has an insult.
"How about a kick up the arse", suggested I, although mam had always warned me not to speak to strangers.
She had said nothing about presenting the unwashed and unwanted with a prompt and physical exit from a situation not of our choosing.
Smelly man turned. Insulted as he was he put his brain in gear and shuffled off.
Cus and I had been prodded into the real world once again.
Memories over.

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